


timshel

by deadlybride



Series: fic for climate crisis [9]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode: s11e20 Don't Call Me Shurley, Established Relationship, M/M, Samulet (Supernatural)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-18
Updated: 2021-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-27 02:07:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30115494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deadlybride/pseuds/deadlybride
Summary: There's a symbol, for how Sam feels about his brother.
Relationships: Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester
Series: fic for climate crisis [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2173491
Comments: 7
Kudos: 50





	timshel

**Author's Note:**

  * For [queermermaids](https://archiveofourown.org/users/queermermaids/gifts).



> Written for Texas relief.

Dean pushes Sam into the bathroom, after what feels like a day of questioning and caution and Dean being withholding—he's so bad at it, Sam doesn't know why he even tries—and Bobby avoiding Sam's eyes—and Sam'll figure that out, eventually—but it's really only four in the afternoon, and he's got food in his belly for the first time in what feels like a week but he's assured is a year, and he's had a beer and a cup of coffee and Dean's squeezed his arm, on his bicep just above the bend of his elbow, and looked into his eyes for a full heart-rich moment when Bobby was on the phone in the kitchen and couldn't see—and they didn't do anything, of course they didn't, not in Bobby's house, but Sam closed the door behind himself with that look thick in his head, the knowing that Dean was safe and okay and that Lucifer didn't hurt him—that _everyone_ was okay, that what he'd done by jumping into the cage had _worked_ when he hadn't been sure, not at all, that it would—and he still doesn't really know how he got out but he'll get that out of Dean eventually—and he turns on the shower and smiles at the rickety jump of the hot water because, holy shit, he's alive to suffer Bobby's godawful shower—and he pulls the shirt off over his head, and unbuttons his jeans, and fishes in his pocket for his phone and his wallet like he always does—and finds a new phone that he doesn't recognize, which makes him frown, a wallet that he does, and—the amulet.

The air goes out of him. The shower's guttering down, getting warm at last. He hears Dean's voice through the door, saying something to Bobby although Sam doesn't know what. Sam twines the leather cord around his fingers and crushes the little metal head in his palm, standing there in his socks and boxers. He didn't lose it. Somehow he—hadn't thought about it, until now, but now that he has he just—assumed it'd be gone. He's not in the same clothes he was wearing before he fell, so—did Dean—? He doesn't know and in this second doesn't care. He brings his closed fist up to his mouth, the cord thin and worn against his lips. He breathes in, slow.

The last time he held it in his hand was—Detroit. Milkjugs of blood sitting in the trunk. Dean—somewhere, talking to Cas maybe, and Sam alone, and Sam was alone a lot then. It feels like yesterday. He'd felt distant somehow. Even if Dean had forgiven him, or at least had been willing to try to forgive him. Ever since the second he'd made the decision to say yes, and decided to make Dean agree, it was like he'd been one step outside his life, looking in. Watching Dean try to accept it and knowing Dean never would. Watching Dean, with his hands in his pockets, and his hand curled so hard around the amulet that the horned edge had actually cut into his palm and he'd bled, inside his jeans. Not minding that and squeezing it tighter. Reminding himself why what he was doing mattered so he wouldn't falter. He wasn't going to falter.

Lucifer had healed that little wound without even acknowledging it. Sam remembers that if nothing else. He opens his hand and he's made sore white marks where the edges of the demon-head have cut into his palm. The shower hisses, next to him, and there's a thump of the side of a fist against the door—"Hey, princess, don't take forever on the primping," Dean says, muffled, the idiot—christ, Sam loves him.

He looks up at the door, startled. Creak of floorboards outside, like Dean's just standing there. Sam blinks at the peeled paint, and calls back, "Dude, it's my first shower in a year, hold your horses," and Dean says, "Yeah, yeah," and Sam closes his hand around the amulet again, his chest—thick. He can't take a full breath. He stoops, and loops the amulet cord around itself three times, four, and tucks it back down into the deepest corner of the pocket of his jeans. He crouches there for a second, feeling—feeling. The steam in the air curls against his skin. He has to stand up. Take the shower, get into fresh clothes, get back out into the house, figure things out. Figure where the world is, after a year without him in it. He crouches there, instead, taking in air. There's a little spot on his jeans, he realizes. Worn, nearly white, where something's made a space for itself. You wouldn't notice the difference, if you saw it every day, but with a jump of time between the last time he wore these jeans and now—it's obvious.

*

Of course it was longer than a year. Of course there were things Dean didn't tell him. Soulless, Sam thinks, trying the word out by himself, when Castiel's left and Sam's waiting for Dean to get back with the sword. Soulless. Not—a good thing to be. He's pretty sure.

Things that are described as soulless: corporations, governments. His comparative philosophy professor in junior year. Soulless due to lack of consideration, due to lacking character, due to—what? Indifference. Cruelty.

When they got to Portland, Dean picked the motel by turning into a random parking lot off the highway, and Sam hauled most of their bags in because he could tell Dean was tired after all the driving, and he'd barely made it through blinking at the one king bed before the door slammed behind Dean and Dean hauled him around by the jacket and gripped his shirt and said low and fervent, _Sammy, if you don't want to you're gonna have to knock me out_ , and Sam dropped the bags right there in the entrance and got his hand on Dean's face and dragged his thumb soft over Dean's pretty lower lip and _felt_ how Dean tensed, and then how the tension spilled out of him like water.

He doesn't get it. He walked around, he was told, without a soul, for a year. More than a year. Castiel was very precise about it. He'd left Dean with Lisa and found his grandfather, instead—his grandfather!—and he'd hunted. When they came to Dean it was by accident, Castiel said, and then when Dean had started hunting with Sam it had seemed to be for convenience, rather than something that meant—anything. Shifters, alphas. Vampires. Castiel knew all of it and told Sam earnestly, not judging. Sam had tried to kill Bobby but it was all right, Castiel said, because Dean had gotten so fearful and sick that he'd let himself die, to speak to Death, to make Sam right. He would have died, if Sam hadn't gotten right. It had been worth that. It had been that bad.

There's a text, from Dean. _Sorta got the sword. Back in 8 hrs. Want any sourdough?_

Sorta? Sam chews his lip. _Just the dragon-killing magic weapon, thanks,_ he texts back, and Dean texts him a _:)_ and Sam puts down his phone and stands up from the table and wants to vomit. Jesus christ. Soulless, he thinks, again, and pulls the amulet out of his pocket, winding the cord around his knuckles, staring at it.

He kept it. Somehow, some way. A year and more. From however he got spit out of the cage, from looking at Dean and choosing to turn away from him, to having Dean _back_ and treating him like—he shudders. His indifferent callous body, carving an efficient line through the world. Sam wants to remember and doesn't. He does want to know what the exact moment was like, when he stuck his hand in his pocket standing on a street under a flickering lamp, watching Dean through a window like a damn pervert, and felt the amulet skin-warmed and heavy against his skin, and thought—what?

He puts it back in his pocket. Eight hours, until Dean gets back. Sam drags his hand over his mouth. When he shifts he can feel it—a little, nagging weight, pressed against his thigh. A year and a half of that with no reason to keep it. With all the reason in the fucking world to keep it. He blows out air until his chest is empty. Eight hours. He'd better have something to show for it. He gets to work.

*

He remembers, of course, later. Fractured, incomplete. Three selves' memories colliding and sleepless nights with a monster whispering in his ear. He curls on his side in a too-warm bed and watches Dean, curled beside him, sleeping. Frowning in his sleep. Lucifer says, though Sam ignores him, "Imagine how much easier he'd have had it at Lisa's, right? Bet she wore sweet little nightgowns, too. Where's yours, Sammy?"

In the cage he hadn't worn the amulet around his neck, not like he had in the year of Dean's absence. Lucifer didn't allow that. Sometimes he would crouch alone in the dark while Lucifer and Michael fought and he'd get space to breathe although breathing there always felt like the coldest depth of a North Dakota January. Shards of ice in his throat. The air thin. The air, of course, not real, but no matter how much Sam's conscious brain tries to rationalize when he has a moment to think, the cage isn't a place for rationality. Lucifer throttles him and Sam knows distantly that his lungs aren't real but he chokes anyway. He chokes. The air whittled thin in his throat and the edges of his vision vignetting to black, to sparkle-shot oxygenless, uncertain—

He turns his head, gasps deep. "Aw, thought I had you there," he hears, and turns fully onto his back, and they didn't bother undressing tonight before Dean crashed miserably into the mattress so he's still got his jeans on, and he shoves his hand into his pocket and wraps his hand around the amulet and squeezes so hard the horned heavy edges tear into his thin unhealed skin and the pain—god, the pain, piercing, cleansing.

It hurts. The room's quiet, except for the rattle of the heater under the window. Dean's breath, at his side. Not quite a snore. Sam's bleeding. He can feel the bandage getting wet. He curls his hand tighter and fumbles in the dark. A hitch—Dean's baby snore, interrupted—and Sam goes _shh_ , as soft as he physically can, and Dean huffs and turns over and puts his face on Sam's shoulder, and Sam squeezes his hip through his jeans very gently, settling down. Lucifer will be back, he knows. When it's worst. When he thinks he's nearly fallen asleep. When Dean wakes up, in the pre-dawn because he has to piss, and he leans in first and kisses Sam's jaw, rough and sleepy with his breath rank, when Sam loves him just—the absolute most—Lucifer will ruin it. Even if Sam knows it isn't real it's as predictable as it is gutting.

He pulls his fist out of his pocket, amulet included. Dean won't wake for—what time is it?—hours. He turns his head toward Dean's, presses his lips against the warmth of his hair. He settles his fist on his chest. If the blood spills—well, it won't be the first time Sam's lost a shirt to blood.

*

Taking the amulet out of the trash wasn't a decision, when he did it. When animals are cornered their lashing out is survival, nothing else. He kept it because—he had to keep it. It wasn't possible that it be left where it was. An indifferent housekeeper dumping it into the mixed refuse of a half-dozen rooms; a trip to a dumpster, and then a dump, to be lost. No.

They had—

Sam knew it didn't matter in the face of what came later but he still felt it. That day. Vermont, autumn. The leaves dark red in the setting sun, or red just because they were. Immaterial, with Dean's back against the tree and his face tipped up to Sam's. Shocked. Sam's fingers on his jaw and then trailing down his throat, hooking into the cord of the amulet and pulling, down, to the demon-head, and Dean letting that tiny insignificant weight tip him forward so he met Sam's mouth when Sam offered it. The bodywarm of it against Sam's thumb when Dean's lips touched his, and how his hand closed into a fist on instinct, shocked too.

Whatever betrayals had come later. Whatever misunderstandings and miseries. There was still that day, and all the days before. This solid thing that had marked Dean as Sam's brother, for all the months and years marching all the way back to that stupid, shitty Christmas morning, five a.m. cold and disappointing, and Sam making the first decision that was really his own that he'd ever made. Handing over the shitty little packet of a gift he hadn't picked, and Dean looking at him with this—rare, uncertain happiness. Not willing to take it, in case it'd be snatched away like everything else had been.

Maybe that hadn't been a decision either, in retrospect. It was Sam's first day, in a hunted life that wasn't one he'd chosen, and maybe that was just instinct. Looping something around Dean's throat and saying, please. Dean had taken it. Said yes. Tossing it in the trash, later—well, Sam didn't blame him, but—and he understood if the yes was retracted, but—Sam couldn't let it go. Even if he was the only one who remembered. Even if, ever after, even if they hurt each other and found each other again and circled each other like twin stars in an uncertain orbit—even if they met, in a dark room, and Dean said to him soft and sorry, _Sammy, I swear_ , and Sam dragged Dean's body over the top of his and took the weight and feel of him like a payment, due—even then. He kept the damn thing, quiet, and his.

It didn't even register, after a while. It transferred from jeans to duffle to backpack to jacket. Part of the morning pat-check, unthinking unless something was missing: phone wallet amulet keys. Amelia never asked about it. Gadreel never interfered with it. When Dean was a demon Sam got up every morning in an empty bed and took a shower and carefully lifted his sling over his head and being ready for the day meant sling wallet keys amulet phone list of contacts he hadn't burned through yet and it just—felt like part of him. He thought about it as much as he thought about his lung.

On the day that Dean almost killed him Sam got dressed without thinking because there were more important things than thinking, and he put on jeans and he put on his boots and he put on shirt, shirt, jacket, and he dragged his hand through his hair instead of combing it, and he put in his pockets keys phone amulet wallet and he stood there, then, in the total quiet of the bunker, and took the amulet back out of his pocket. He looked at it in his palm. Small, heavy. The cord looping back over his knuckles. Dean had had to get new ones, he remembered. The leather ones kept wearing through, because Dean wore it every second: sleeping, waking, in the shower. When they were in bed, and Sam folded Dean in close against his chest, and Dean's lips brushed his jaw, and Sam slipped careful fingers under the cord, worrying at it. If only he'd known, then, the things he had to worry about.

He put the amulet back in his pocket. He went to Dean's room, in the bunker, and found the pictures Dean didn't keep very well hidden, and flicked past the ones of them together until he found the one of their mother. That, maybe. That would work. It wasn't fair, that day, to try to pretend anything else would, and as far as what mattered more to Sam—that was his problem, he thought, and nothing that needed to bother Dean. It was important, he thought, to be realistic.

*

"Give us a minute," Dean says.

"Dean," Sam says, appalled.

Chuck—Chuck? Jesus christ—jesus christ! Sam thinks. Chuck looks entertained, standing there in his sneakers—his Chucks! Jesus christ!—and his jeans and his simple short body and how he's—he's—

"Dude, seriously," Dean says, impatient, and Chuck raises his hands like surrender and says, "Hey, no, I get it! You've got stuff to talk about! Just say my name when you're ready, we've got all the time in the world, I'm sure my sister isn't planning the imminent destruction of all creation," and he winks, and then—disappears, jesus _christ_ because Chuck is GOD—

"Sammy," Dean says, firm.

"Dean," Sam says back, immediately, "what are you doing—holy shit, do you realize—"

"Sam," Dean says, in a different tone, and Sam's gut jolts, hooked. Diverted.

The bunker, quiet around them. They're in the map room and the lights are all on full, bright and warm. Dean's looking at him and Sam—they've been good, it's been good, for months and months—the best it's ever been, even better than those first heady days when they were learning each other, young and reckless—and even with all that, Sam's nervous, somehow.

"How you doing, Sammy," Dean says, eyes narrow.

Sam lets out a sharp breath.

Dean seems surprised at the lack of answer and his chin tips up. He looks at Sam steadily. Sam doesn't know what he's supposed to say and so stays silent, and Dean keeps looking at him and then slides his hand into his pocket, and pulls out—of course.

He holds it low, in front of himself, dangling from two fingers. The heavy pendulum sway. Dean's eyes are low, fixed on it, but Sam's watching Dean's face.

There are obvious things to say that Dean doesn't say and Sam's grateful for it. "You took the other one," is what Dean says, and he doesn't look up to see Sam frown confusion but he must sense it, somehow, because he continues: "From that—jesus, Sam. From that play, that the girls put on. When I came out to the car the next morning it was gone. Doesn't seem fair. You got the prop and the real thing, both."

"Sorry," Sam says, and Dean says, "Christ," and takes the three long steps across the room to where Sam's got his back to a pillar and kisses him. Sam takes it, breathing in. Not soft, not that giving sweet that Dean can be, but it's Dean's mouth and therefore it's a miracle, every time.

Dean pulls back. His brow rolls against Sam's, brief, and then he sets down from where he lifted up on his toes, and he looks at Sam from six inches, their hips pressed together. The amulet swings against Sam's stomach, from where Dean's hands are fisted on his sternum.

"Sammy," Dean says, and Sam takes a deep breath and says, "I didn't mean to keep it—secret."

It's a lie and a bad one. He doesn't know why he said it that way but he doesn't know a truer one. He didn't—make a decision about it. It was just that…

Dean doesn't call him on it. "You said," he starts, and then his cheek sucks in on one side. Sam notices for the first time how tired his eyes are. It was a long day. The fog and the people they couldn't save. He folds one hand over one of Dean's, pressed against his chest, and Dean's eyes dip, and maybe that makes it easy enough because Dean says, "Sam, I wouldn't choose her."

Sam takes a deep breath. Their hands rise, all knotted together. Dean says, "It kills me, Sammy. That you think I'd—but I wouldn't. If it were any choice, if I could—make it how I wanted it to be. I wouldn't, not fuckin' once," and Sam says, "I know," just to stop Dean from talking, with his voice thickening up that way.

God's somewhere, waiting in the wings. Sam doesn't give a shit, anymore. Dean's mouth turns up at one corner but it's not happy, and Sam slides his free hand up Dean's side, gripping through his jacket, trying. However he knows how to try. "I know," he says, again, because—christ, he does. That nasty awful fog doesn't get to take this from him. "Dean, I told you before. Whatever she makes you—think, or do. I got it. I can handle it."

Dean bites his lips between his teeth and he looks down. His thumb catches the swinging cord of the amulet. "You know," Dean says, echoing. A question, buried down in it.

He hasn’t said it, specifically, out loud or internally or even when he prayed, back when he thought that praying was something that mattered, but: Sam hates Amara. Hates every aspect of her, baby to adult to imagined vision to physical manifestation to the haunted look, in Dean's eye, when he thinks Sam isn't looking. Hates how she makes Dean doubt. Hates how she makes Dean afraid. Hates every fragment of her that draws Dean's attention away, makes him look into the shadows of the room, makes him weak and afraid of his own weakness. In their bed at night Dean lays awake and Sam is awake with him and he thinks—how can he prove it? How can he show Dean how much he wants to take this burden away—to make it so the darkness is nothing that could come between them?

"Sam," Dean says. "You're…"

Nothing goes there. What could? Sam slides his hand from Dean's side up to the back of Dean's neck, cupping his skull, holding. He ducks his head. His temple against Dean's temple, Dean's breath against his throat. He closes his eyes and reaches and finds the amulet, dangling, on his first try. Luck. He gathers it into his palm and knocks Dean's fist open and closes their hands together, fisted around the sharp little weight of it. Any other day Dean would make a crack about holding hands.

Sam says, "I kept it because I wanted you. It wasn't your fault that things went bad. Or, I don't know. Half yours and half mine. Or maybe it was destiny's fault—fate, or something. It doesn't matter. What mattered was—how you stuck with me. How we—figured it out, every time. No matter how crappy it got, or how much we didn't trust each other, or… Because it's us, right? Every time. It's us, no matter what. I knew that on days I didn't know anything else. Nothing's going to take that away. Not the Darkness. Not God."

True. Dean's temple tips, against his. Their stubble drags together. "Not even the big guy, huh?" he says. Frail. "Seem pretty sure of yourself, there."

"I am," Sam says, not joking, and hears the breath Dean takes in. He squeezes their hands together, squeezes the back of Dean's neck.

"Shit," Dean says, and lets out a fraction of a laugh. "I wish I..."

He shakes his head, tipping away from Sam. Sam looks at his profile. The sweep of his eyelashes. His nose, with the little broken tilt. His jaw, squared. Sam bites the inside of his cheek and then lets go of Dean's neck, and folds their hands together all in a square—Dean's hand over Sam's over Dean's over Sam's—and when he unfolds them the amulet's caught in Dean's palm, and Sam folds his fingers over Dean's fist and pushes it, down, tucking it neat into Dean's jacket pocket. Dean blinks at him.

"I don't need a reminder," Sam says. Echo of something that feels like forever ago, surprisingly—now—true. "I'll be right here. No matter what. I swear."

He lets go of Dean's fist and slides up his arm, holding his shoulder instead. Dean looks back and forth between his eyes. "Thank you, Sam," he says, serious.

Sam nods. Dean looks up into his eyes, and then at his mouth, and when he leans for the kiss Sam responds simply, holding him and trying to say—everything there is to say. There could never be enough time, to say all there is to say.

Dean pulls back, after a few seconds. Not nearly enough. Their noses brush together and Dean's hands are on his chest, heavy. The amulet in his pocket. Where it belongs, Sam thinks, but it doesn't—matter, the same way it did before. It's not tying Dean to him; it's not a relic of a promise, broken and then kept. He touches Dean's jaw, with his thumb, and Dean sighs against him.

"Guess we should call him back," Dean says. "You think he knows we totally made out just now?"

Sam groans, and pushes Dean away, and catches him smiling. "You're totally going to hell," he says, and Dean winks at him, and turns away, and calls out, "Yo, Chuck!" like he's calling the literal creator for a dinner of hot wings, and Sam would despair but Dean's hand is in his pocket, and—well, they're okay, so. It's okay.

**Author's Note:**

> [posted here on my tumblr if you'd like to reblog](https://zmediaoutlet.tumblr.com/post/645974637237403648/in-support-of-texas-relief-wincest-endgame)
> 
> Would appreciate any thoughts you have.


End file.
